Donald Trump and 18 others charged in Georgia election inquiry.
Former US President Donald Trump has been charged in Georgia with attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss.
In a 41-charge document issued by a Fulton County grand jury, he and 18 others were indicted on counts including racketeering.
The indictment marks Mr. Trump’s fourth criminal charge of the year.
In all cases, he has denied the accusations.
In February 2021, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis launched an investigation into allegations of election meddling against Mr Trump and his associates.
Also read: Can Donald Trump be reelected despite being convicted?
Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, former White House lawyer John Eastman, and a former Justice Department official, Jeffrey Clark, are among the defendants indicted late Monday night.
The alleged co-conspirators “knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump,” according to the indictment.
The charge sheet also refers to the defendants as a “criminal organization”, accusing them of a number of crimes, including:
- False statements and writings
- Impersonating a public officer
- Forgery
- Filing false documents
- Influencing witnesses
- Computer trespass
- Conspiracy to defraud the state
- Theft and perjury.
The most serious charge, violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act (Rico) Act, carries a maximum prison sentence of 20 years.
The act, intended to aid in the prosecution of organized criminal syndicates such as the mafia, assists prosecutors in connecting the dots between underlings who broke the law and those who gave them marching orders.
As Donald Trump and 18 others charged in Georgia election inquiry, Mr. Trump, who is currently the Republican Party’s frontrunner for the White House, claimed the investigation by Ms. Willis, a Democrat, was politically motivated.
In a statement, the Trump campaign described the district attorney as a “rabid partisan” who had filed “these bogus indictments” to interfere with the 2024 presidential race and “damage the dominant Trump campaign”.
Earlier on Monday, a list of criminal charges against Mr. Trump appeared on a Fulton County website before the grand jury voted on whether to indict him.
According to the filing, Mr. Trump was charged with racketeering, conspiracy to commit fraud, and making false statements.
Ms Willis’s spokesperson stated that the document was “fictitious,” but did not explain how it ended up on the court’s website.
Mr. Trump and his supporters used the apparent clerical error to claim that the process was rigged.
Federal prosecutors in Washington, DC have already charged Mr. Trump with conspiring to rig the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat President Joe Biden. That charge sheet allotted a lot of space to the Trump team’s activities in Georgia.
Ms Willis’ investigation focuses on Georgia, a key battleground state in the US presidential election that Mr Trump narrowly lost.
Mr Trump was recorded on a phone call in January 2021 asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes, the number he would have needed to defeat Mr Biden in that state.
After agreeing to interviews with Fulton County prosecutors, at least eight “fake electors” who signed a bogus certificate claiming Mr Trump won the election in that state have reached immunity deals in the case.
